Visual Arts

Thinking of my younger niece's painting gets me to thinking what I always do, of those with talent in the visual arts, what a breathtaking thing it is to be able to translate ideas into images. Little niece, Squee, has painted me a number of amazingly joyous smiles, but elder niece, Wow, is enough years older to have produced a longer history. She's had a visual ability all her life, and my gallery of hers reaches back to her flowers-and-frogs period and up into her Jackson-Pollack-had-no-idea-what-he-was-missing-out-on-not-using-metallic-purple period.

Squee is a burst of excitement. She's cute, she's still small, she's affectionate and amazing.

Oh, but Wow. I've known Wow longer; she was the first for our family. I have been fascinated and smitten with her so many years she's almost an adolescent now. She's poised, she's brilliantly intelligent, and she's beautiful in a way that goes way beyond the surface-appearance benefits of good health, good humor, and wide eyes. She's always had an innate generosity and creativity which make her genuinely remarkable.

And she can DRAW. She can paint, she can bead and braid and knit and MAKE. She is the very essence of creativity - able to make pictures and stories and objects - I even get compliments every time I wear the earrings she made for me.

I miss those girls. They just can't know. Amazing.

Squee moved me deeply, when she cried for happiness, seeing me last summer. Wow did it when she cried, when they left Virginia. The two of them are such a future. What a glorious legacy, our family.


***


Not long ago, I was told: Squee is writing, now. She wants to tell stories, and she can't even write all the words.

Squee is five.

She goes to ask daddy how to make the word she needs, and he tells her it doesn't matter, to make what she thinks looks right for it, and just to tell her stories. Just to write.

He's a pretty great daddy, I suspect.

He certainly has amazing daughters.